Below the Belt(31)

The knock on the door jarred her from her meditation two minutes in. Grumbling, she stood and headed to the door. It had to be a mistake. Her mom would have texted before coming over, Kara would never have left Zach so late at night, and nobody else she knew socially lived in the area anymore.

When she saw Brad through the peephole, she sucked in a breath. What the . . .

She started to undo the chain, then remembered she was in her pajamas. She looked down and took in the simple green shirt and Family Guy flannel pants. Uh . . . embarrassing.

Undoing the chain and the dead bolt, she cracked the door open enough to stick her head out. “Hi.”

Hands stuffed in his pockets, he turned to face her. He wore a light blue, striped button-down shirt, jeans, running shoes and a scowl.

“You owe me.” He walked toward the door and she opened it reflexively, though she hadn’t intended to let him in to begin with. Mostly because, well, Family Guy pants.

“I owe you?” She closed the door behind him and found him prowling her living room. Yes, prowling. It was the only word to describe what he was doing. He reminded her of the caged panthers at the zoo. Restless, confined, agitated by the boundaries their life had been reduced to, they paced from one end of the cage to the other in a fruitless effort to work off some frustration. Brad was doing the exact same thing now, only he was wearing a hole around her coffee table instead of a mock-jungle environment.

“You owe me,” he repeated, then stopped dead in his tracks to shoot an accusatory glare at her. “You told me I needed to get to know them. I needed to be a good leader. They look up to me. I should be a part of what I want to join.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I did say those things, yes.”

“You called me a hermit.”

“I didn’t use the word ‘hermit,’” she argued.

“You implied it.”

“Maybe.”

“I just had the longest dinner of my life. I sat there with a bunch of nineteen-and twenty-year-olds and listened to them talk about scoring ass and getting drunk—not that any of them are legally able to—and the joys of being a general badass.” He sat on her couch so hard the frame squeaked. Rubbing his hands over his head, he sighed. “Longest meal ever.”

He was weary, and she felt bad about that. But the entire thing amused her. Tickled her, if she were being honest. “You took them out to dinner.”

He nodded without looking up.

Gathering herself together, she sat gently beside him on the couch. “You took your group of guys to dinner, and let them ramble on about women and drinking, because they wanted to impress you.”

He didn’t move, just sighed.

Rubbing his back lightly, she chuckled. “That was nice.”

“You owe me,” he said, his voice muffled.

“What do I owe you?”

“Decent company. I need a palate cleanser after that. Conversation with an adult who won’t talk about a stripper they know in Yuma—though her existence is sketchy, at best, if you ask me—or the last time you puked your guts out from a keg of Bud.”

“It was last Tuesday. And the stripper wasn’t from Yuma, but Houston.” She sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Veronica. God, I miss her. She had this tattoo of a snake on her stomach, and when she did this one move . . .”

He laughed. Laughed, then choked while trying to hold it back and kept on laughing. Leaning back into her sofa, he draped an arm over her shoulder and let the chuckles die down. “I think your debt is already paid, just with that.”

“Good.” Because it felt so good to snuggle against him, she forced herself to stand up. “Want something to drink?”

“Water, thanks.” He propped a foot on her coffee table and picked up her notepad. Since there was nothing of interest on it, she didn’t care. Picking up the mug of cooled tea, she went to the sink to dump the failed experiment out. She came back and handed him a bottle of water. He raised a brow at her own drink of choice.

“Beer?”

“Yeah, well, tea wasn’t working for me.” She took a sip from the bottle and made a refreshed sound. “Screw tea.”

He nearly choked on his water in surprise. “Aren’t you trainers all supposed to be health nuts with a penchant for making athletes feel guilty about every little thing?”

“Why bother? You’ll feel guilty anyway.” She took another sip and settled the cold bottle on her stomach. To get her bare feet equal to his on her coffee table, she slumped way down on the cushions so it was mostly the top of her shoulders and her neck resting against the back. Uncomfortable, but a nice place to rest her drink. She tapped one of his running shoes with her bare toes. “I’m not someone who is into the organics, crunchy movement. I respect people’s choices. I’m more of the everything-in-moderation crowd. A beer’s fine, as long as you’re not pounding back a six-pack a night, or driving home.”

He glanced at his water, then saluted her with it and took a sip. She did the same with her own brew. “Ah. So good.”

“Show-off.”

She grinned at his disgruntlement. “Sorry. If you lived in this complex, you could have one and then walk home. Alas, you do not.”

“Alas,” he muttered, staring at her beer like it was a rabbit and he wanted to reach out and snare it with his bare hands. “I just watched four men devour cheeseburgers, steaks and fries dripping with cheese and ranch sauce. I’m not in the mood to be tempted right now.”